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Poem: Retcon

The newspaper’s are calling her Joshua. She was Leelah, that is the name she chose for herself. No matter how much they may try to take that away from her after she took herself out of the world, let us not forget her real name.

Retcon

Rewrite me
pick through the details
of my life and edit them
to suit a narrative that soothes you
push down with the weight of delusion
everything I really was and hoped to be

For an instant
I dared to show my face
to be bold in the face of fear
to care enough to write my own story
the me hidden away by shame and ritual
denied by traditions left best in history books

Where is my script
now that I have penned the final scene
the notes I left for you to follow
the outline tossed on your floor
ignored for what you needed of me
my sense of self be damned

Damned
I cannot even be that
lost and reconstructed
replaced and reduced to one act
who will you cast as me
in the fiction you call memory.